Part 2 (1/2)

A new sound developed in dark Manhattan, in smoky late-night sessions. Musicians no longer attempted to present themselves as entertainers. They limited the time of songs by stripping down the melodic form, emphasizing improvisation as well as complex chord changes and complicated beats. When this music, which came to be called bebop, was reproduced on records after the strike, the sound seemed bizarre, almost alien to some jazz enthusiasts. But the new movement's key artists, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, were constructing an experimental form in a radically different environment from the Depression-era thirties that had fostered swing. Bebop reflected the anger of the zoot-suiters and the enterprise of black artists who opposed mainstream white culture. These musicians sought to create a protest sound that could not be so easily exploited and commodified.

Many who favored the radical new jazz coming from Harlem nightclubs described the 1943 insurrection as another ”zoot suit riot.” The term had become a common metaphor for black activities that seemed subversive to white order. One zoot-suiter who had taken part in the Harlem riot linked black resistance to the U.S. war effort with urban unrest: ”I'm not a spy or a saboteur, but I don't like goin' over there fightin' for the white man-so be it.” Even African-American social psychologist Kenneth Clarke characterized the new militancy he had observed in Harlem as ”the Zoot Effect.” As the critic Frank Kofsky observed of the bebop movement, ”Jazz inevitably functioned not solely as music, but also as a vehicle for the expression of outraged protest.”

Malcolm was thoroughly immersed in this world, and well aware of the new sound and its implications-the frisson of outsiders shaking up mainstream culture. Like the zoot-suiters, beboppers implicitly rejected a.s.similation into standards established by whites and were contemptuous of the police and the power of the U.S. government over black people's lives. Both sought to carve out ident.i.ties that blacks could claim for themselves. Jazz artists recognized the parallels and, not surprisingly, later became Malcolm's avid supporters in the 1960s. His version of militant black nationalism appealed to their spirit of rebellion and artistic nonconformity.

One major lesson Malcolm absorbed from the jazz artists' performances in the forties was the power of black art to convey celebrity status. Young Malcolm wistfully dreamt about the adoration of the crowd. In Harlem, he would escort Reginald backstage to join the artists and the musicians at the Roxy or the Paramount, intimating that they knew who he was. ”After selling reefers with the bands as they traveled, I was known to almost every popular Negro musician around New York in 1944-45,” he would boast. In July 1944, he even found work at the Lobster Pond nightclub on Fortysecond Street. The proprietor, Abe Goldstein, is identified as ”Hymie” in the Autobiography Autobiography: ”Red, I'm a Jew and you're black,” he would say. ”These Gentiles don't like either one of us.”Hymie paid me good money while I was with him, sometimes two hundred and three hundred a week. I would have done anything for Hymie. I did do all kinds of things. But my main job was transporting bootleg that Hymie supplied, usually to those spruced-up bars which he had sold to someone.

What the Autobiography Autobiography fails to reveal is that Detroit Red, under the stage name Jack Carlton, was allowed to perform as a bar entertainer. At last, on a lighted nightclub stage, Malcolm could display his dancing ability; he even sometimes played the drums. The stage name was his way of honoring his late half brother, Earl, Jr., who had performed as Jimmy Carlton. It isn't clear whether Goldstein paid Malcolm primarily to entertain or to transport illegal alcohol (if his account is true). But in October 1944, Malcolm was fired. A few years later, on the occasion of another arrest, Goldstein described his former employee as ”a bit unstable and neurotic but under proper guidance, a good boy.” fails to reveal is that Detroit Red, under the stage name Jack Carlton, was allowed to perform as a bar entertainer. At last, on a lighted nightclub stage, Malcolm could display his dancing ability; he even sometimes played the drums. The stage name was his way of honoring his late half brother, Earl, Jr., who had performed as Jimmy Carlton. It isn't clear whether Goldstein paid Malcolm primarily to entertain or to transport illegal alcohol (if his account is true). But in October 1944, Malcolm was fired. A few years later, on the occasion of another arrest, Goldstein described his former employee as ”a bit unstable and neurotic but under proper guidance, a good boy.”

Unemployed and desperate, and probably nursing a drug habit, Malcolm soon drifted back to Boston, and to Ella. He may have reasoned that, given her own continuing illegal activities, she could hardly turn her back on him, and he tried to convince her that he would turn over a new leaf and return to the upright upwardly mobile life she still thought to be her own destiny. To demonstrate his sobriety, in late October he obtained a menial job at a Sears Roebuck warehouse. The wages were a paltry twenty dollars a week, and the work strenuous. Malcolm had never been physically strong; years of alcohol addiction and cocaine use could not have helped. Over a six-week period, he failed to get to work six times. By Thanksgiving, he had had enough, and quit. In desperation, he stole a fur coat from Ella's home, p.a.w.ning it for five dollars. The coat belonged to Ella's sister, Grace; Ella was so outraged that she summoned the police. Malcolm was duly arrested and taken to jail. The Roxbury court gave him a three-month suspended sentence, with probation to last one full year. This was Detroit Red's first offense to result in arrest and conviction. He was nineteen years old.

The Christmas season was only weeks away, and Goldstein consented to let Red work for him in New York City for a few weeks. In January 1945, with several hundred dollars in his pocket, Malcolm set off for Lansing. He had sent home small sums of money since 1941 and figured that his family owed him. Through Ella or Reginald, the Little siblings undoubtedly knew about their brothers downward slide, and his drug dependency. He antic.i.p.ated resistance, especially from Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert, so he arrived wearing a conservative-looking suit. His days of crime, he claimed, were long gone. For several weeks, seemingly true to his word, he worked at East Lansing's Coral Gables bar, then as a busboy at the city's Mayfair Ballroom. But he used these jobs as opportunities for petty theft. Traveling into Detroit, he brazenly robbed an acquaintance, a black man named Douglas Haynes, at gunpoint. Haynes filed a complaint with the Detroit police, who contacted the Lansing police. On March 17, 1945, Malcolm was arrested and turned over to the Detroit Police Department, charged with grand larceny. Wilfred posted a bond of a thousand dollars, and for a short time Malcolm found menial jobs at a Lansing mattress maker and then a truck factory. When his trial was postponed, he decided that his best move was to get out of town. Sometime in August 1945, he fled the jurisdiction; a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The Autobiography Autobiography is completely silent about these events. Undoubtedly, Malcolm was profoundly ashamed about this phase of his past. He likely felt that the deepest violation he had committed was the humiliation he inflicted on his family through his career as a petty criminal. But he may have also dropped these incidents from his history as part of the attempt to shape his legend. His amateurish efforts at gangsterism in Boston and Lansing-the clumsy theft of his aunt's coat, the ridiculous armed robbery of an acquaintance-undermined the credibility of his supposed criminal exploits in New York, and even he must have realized that the Michigan arrest warrant, combined with his parole violation from Ma.s.sachusetts, would follow him across the country. If he was ever arrested again for even a minor crime, these other violations would be brought against him. is completely silent about these events. Undoubtedly, Malcolm was profoundly ashamed about this phase of his past. He likely felt that the deepest violation he had committed was the humiliation he inflicted on his family through his career as a petty criminal. But he may have also dropped these incidents from his history as part of the attempt to shape his legend. His amateurish efforts at gangsterism in Boston and Lansing-the clumsy theft of his aunt's coat, the ridiculous armed robbery of an acquaintance-undermined the credibility of his supposed criminal exploits in New York, and even he must have realized that the Michigan arrest warrant, combined with his parole violation from Ma.s.sachusetts, would follow him across the country. If he was ever arrested again for even a minor crime, these other violations would be brought against him.

He first returned to New York City and subsequently to Boston, desperately trying to survive through a variety of hustles. It was during this time that Malcolm encountered a man named William Paul Lennon, and the uncertain particulars of their intimate relations.h.i.+p would generate much controversy and speculation in the years following Malcolm's death.

Lennon was born on March 25, 1888, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to Bernard and Nellie F. Lennon. His father was a successful merchant and newspaper publisher and active in local Democratic Party politics. The eldest son of eight children, Lennon enrolled in Brown University in 1906 as a ”special student,” described in the school's catalog as a category for ”mature persons of good character who desire to pursue some special subject and who have had the requisite preliminary training.” After attending Brown for several years, Lennon drifted, seeking to establish himself in some suitable profession. During World War I, he served as chief petty officer in the navy, stationed out of Newport, Rhode Island, and upon his discharge he lived briefly with his parents before getting hired as a hotel manager in Pawtucket. Within five years he had become manager of Manhattan's Dorset Hotel, just off Fifth Avenue in midtown. Apparently he embarked on a successful career in hotel management, but-contrary to Malcolm's later a.s.sertions that his patron was a multimillionaire-there is no record indicating that Lennon ever became truly wealthy. Sometime during the 1930s or early 1940s, Lennon had relocated to Boston, where he began to employ male secretaries in his home.

Malcolm's initial contact with Lennon may have come through cla.s.sified advertis.e.m.e.nts placed in New York newspapers. What is certain is that sometime in 1944 Malcolm had begun working for Lennon as a ”butler and occasional house worker” at Lennon's Boston home, on an affluent stretch of Arlington Street overlooking the Public Garden. Soon something deeper than an employeremployee relations.h.i.+p developed. (After Malcolm's later arrest, in 1946, he would give the police Lennon's name and address as a previous employer, convinced that Lennon would use his financial resources and other contacts to help him during his time in prison.) The Autobiography Autobiography describes s.e.xual contacts with Lennon, except that Malcolm falsely attributed them to a character named Rudy: describes s.e.xual contacts with Lennon, except that Malcolm falsely attributed them to a character named Rudy: [Rudy] had a side deal going, a hustle that took me right back to the old steering days in Harlem. Once a week, Rudy went to the home of this old, rich Boston blueblood, pillar-of-society aristocrat. He paid Rudy to undress them both, then pick up the old man like a baby, lay him on his bed, then stand over him and sprinkle him all over with talc.u.m powder talc.u.m powder. Rudy said the old man would actually reach his climax from that.

Based on circ.u.mstantial but strong evidence, Malcolm was probably describing his own h.o.m.os.e.xual encounters with Paul Lennon. The revelation of his involvement with Lennon produced much speculation about Malcolm's s.e.xual orientation, but the experience appears to have been limited. There is no evidence from his prison record in Ma.s.sachusetts or from his personal life after 1952 that he was actively h.o.m.os.e.xual. More credible, perhaps, is Rodnell Collins's insight about his uncle: ”Malcolm basically lived two lives.” When he was around Ella, ”he enthusiastically partic.i.p.ated in family picnics and family dinners. . . . He saved some of his money to send to his brothers and sisters in Lansing.” But in his Detroit Red life, he partic.i.p.ated in prost.i.tution, marijuana sales, cocaine sessions, numbers running, the occasional robbery, and, apparently, paid h.o.m.os.e.xual encounters. Keeping the two lives separate from each other was never easy, due to his unstable material circ.u.mstances. But Malcolm had the intelligence and ingenuity to mask his most illegal and potentially upsetting activities from his family and friends.

Well-to-do white men were one thing, white women another. During the war, his old paramour Bea Caragulian had married a white man, Mehan Bazarian, but he was serving in the military and was largely away. Malcolm's s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with Bea had continued after her marriage, although it eventually grew chaotic and frequently abusive. By early December 1945, he was back in Boston, with no place to go except Ella's. Once again, his disgusted half sister had no choice but to allow him to stay; after all, blood was blood. Malcolm quickly ran down Shorty Jarvis, who complained to him about his wife and their money problems. Within several days, Malcolm organized a gang, with the intention of robbing homes in Boston's affluent neighborhoods. His motley crew consisted of another African American, Francis E. ”Sonny” Brown; Bea; her younger sister, Joyce Caragulian; a third Armenian woman, Kora Marderosian; and Shorty. Early in the evening of December 14, 1945, Malcolm and Brown robbed a Brookline home, absconding with $2,400 worth of fur coats, silverware, jewelry, and other items. The next night, they struck a second Brookline house, stealing several rugs and silverware valued at nearly $400, in addition to liquor, jewelry, and linen. For these break-ins, the gang followed a general pattern. Sonny would jimmy the home's rear door, then open the front door for Malcolm and Shorty. The premises was quickly looted, with a focus on items that could easily be sold on the black market. The women stayed in the automobile, acting as lookouts. On December 16 they drove to New York City to sell part of their merchandise. Some items that failed to find a buyer were dumped, but most of the loot was distributed among gang members, a mistake no veteran burglar would ever have made.

One of the gang's most lucrative hauls took place the day after their trip to New York. Entering a home in Newton, Ma.s.sachusetts, the young criminals managed to grab jewelry, a watch, a vacuum cleaner, bed linen, silver candlesticks, earrings, a gold pendant and chain, and additional merchandise, with a total value estimated by police at $6,275. Over a period of one month, they robbed about eight homes. When they were finally caught, Malcolm was primarily responsible for tipping their hand. He gave a watch to a relative as a Christmas gift; the relative sold it on to a Boston jeweler, who, suspecting it had been stolen, contacted the police. The authorities bided their time. In early January 1946, Malcolm took another stolen watch to a repair shop. When he returned for it, local police were on hand to arrest him. Malcolm was carrying a loaded .32 caliber pistol at the time. During his interrogation, detectives disingenuously promised not to prosecute him on the gun charge if he agreed to give up his accomplices. He readily complied, naming his whole crew. With the exception of Sonny Brown, who managed to elude authorities, everyone in the gang was promptly arrested.

Malcolm was charged with the illegal possession of a firearm in Roxbury court on January 15. The next day, at the Quincy court, charges of larceny and breaking and entering were added. The court set a bail of ten thousand dollars. Because the burglaries had taken place in two Ma.s.sachusetts counties, Norfolk and Middles.e.x, two trials were held. Shorty Jarvis's account provides a vivid description of his and Malcolm's ordeal: ”We were urged by the district attorney and our white lawyers to plead guilty as charged; we were also told that if we did, things would go real easy and well in our favor (meaning the sentence).” Both men had been ”d.a.m.n fools” not to have antic.i.p.ated a legal double cross. Bea was subpoenaed and turned the state's evidence against Malcolm, largely reading the script the prosecutors wrote for her. Jarvis claimed that the district attorney had even attempted unsuccessfully ”to get the girls to testify that we had raped them; this was so he could ask the judge for a fifteen-to-twenty-year sentence or life in prison.” To Malcolm and Shorty, as well as to Ella, it seemed that the prime motivation for their prosecution was racial. ”As long as I live,” Shorty reflected, ”I will never forget how the judge told me I had had no business a.s.sociating with white women.” Ella's son, Rodnell, observed: ”In court [Ella] said, the men were described by one lawyer as 'schvartze b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' and by another as 'minor Al Capones.' The arresting officer meanwhile referred to [the women] as 'poor, unfortunate, friendless, scared lost girls.'”

Both Malcolm Little and Shorty Jarvis pled guilty and were sentenced in a Middles.e.x County court to four concurrent eight-to-ten-year sentences, to be served in prison. While this was read out, they were confined behind bars in a steel cage in the courtroom. Shorty snapped, shaking the bars and screaming at the presiding judge, ”Why don't you kill me? Why don't you kill me? I would rather be dead than do ten years.” In Norfolk County Superior Court eight weeks later, Malcolm received three concurrent six-to-eight-year sentences. The court could hardly have imposed more. When Malcolm remarked to a defense attorney that ”we seem to be getting sentenced because of those girls,” the lawyer replied angrily, ”You had no business with white girls!” Bea pleaded to the courts that she and the other white women were innocent victims of Malcolm's vicious criminal enterprise. He had coerced them. ”We lived in constant fear,” she told the court with emotion. She ultimately served only seven months of a five-year sentence.

Bea's self-serving actions left a profound impression on Malcolm. ”All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak,” he observed. ”They are attracted to the male in whom they see strength.” His misogyny had been reinforced during his time as a steerer for Harlem prost.i.tutes. Reflecting on his experiences, Malcolm wrote, ”I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man from the best possible source, from his own women.” Bea's actions underlined what he perceived as women's deceptive, opportunistic tendencies. Malcolm rarely examined his own behavior-his broken relations.h.i.+p with Gloria Strother, his physical abuse of Bea Caragulian-let alone his betrayal of his partners.

CHAPTER 3.

Becoming ”X”

January 1946August 1952

On March 8, 1946, a Ma.s.sachusetts state psychiatrist interviewed prisoner number 22843. ”He got called every filthy name I could think of,” Malcolm remembered. He described himself as being ”physically miserable and as evil-tempered as a snake.” The ”Psychometric Report,” written nearly two months later, however, described him as attentive and apparently cooperative. Malcolm blithely informed his interviewer that his parents had been missionaries and his mother a ”white Scot” whose marriage to a black man had led to Malcolm's being taunted by racial abuse throughout his childhood. Other misinformation followed. The psychiatrist, apparently troubled by all he had heard, observed that the prisoner ”has fatalistic views, is moody, cynical, and has a sardonic smile which seems to be affected because of his sensitiveness to color.”

His defense lawyer had prevented his speaking on his own behalf during the trials, and Malcolm was convinced that his lengthy sentence was due solely to his involvement with Bea and the other white women. He also dreaded, being not yet twenty-one years old, the challenges of prison life, a dangerous world about which he knew only horror stories. During the weeks he was held in county jails prior to his transfer to the state penitentiary, Malcolm decided he had to exaggerate his criminal experiences, making himself appear tougher and more violent than he really was. He would also present a made-up history of his own family, making it almost impossible for the authorities to know his true background. He already felt outraged by how corrections officers recognized only a convict's number, rather than his name. In prison, ”you never heard your name, only your number,” he would recall years later. ”On all of your clothing, every item was your number, stenciled. It grew stenciled on your brain.”

Two months later, another caseworker filed a report on Malcolm. ”Subject is a tall light-complexioned negro,” it ran in part, ”unmarried, a child of a broken home, who has grown up indifferently into a pattern of life he liked, colorful, cynical, a-moral, fatalistic.” The report indicated that the prison authorities viewed him as the ringleader of the burglary ring. Perhaps Malcolm once again launched into a string of profanities, for the caseworker judged his prognosis as ”poor. His present 'hard' att.i.tude will no doubt increase in bitterness. . . . Subject may prove an intermediate security risk as he will find it hard to adjust from the accelerated tempo of night spots to the slow pace of inst.i.tution life at Charlestown [prison].”

Both Malcolm and Shorty Jarvis had been a.s.signed to Charlestown State Prison, at that time the oldest penal facility in continuous use in the world. It had been constructed in 18045 on the west banks of the Charlestown peninsula along the Boston Harbor, and its physical conditions were wretched: its mice-infested cells were tiny-seven feet by eight-and devoid of plumbing and running water. Prisoners relieved themselves in buckets that were emptied only once in twenty-four hours. There was no common dining room, so prisoners were forced to eat in their cells. The atmosphere was hardly improved by the prison's grotesque history of executions, the most notorious being the 1927 electrocution of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who had previously been unfairly convicted for a 1920 robbery and double homicide. The place was so beastly that in May 1952, shortly before Malcolm's release, state governor Paul A. Dever described it as ”a Bastille that eclipses in infamy any current prison in the United States.”

At first Malcolm had great difficulty accepting his sentence, and especially what he perceived as Bea's betrayal in the trial. His fits of outrage and alienation were plain. Shorty, still upset with Malcolm for turning him in, began calling him the ”Green-Eyed Monster.” During his first months, Malcolm routinely insulted guards and prisoners alike. He had never been particularly religious, but he now concentrated his profanities against G.o.d and religion in general. Other prisoners, listening to Malcolm's tirades, came up with a further nickname for him: ”Satan.” In the Middles.e.x jail during his trial, Malcolm had been forced to get clean, but once in Charlestown he soon resumed his old drug habit, first getting high on ground nutmeg. In small amounts-roughly four to eight teaspoons-nutmeg is a mild hallucinogen, creating euphoria and visual distortions; when taken in large amounts, as Malcolm may have done, it has similar effects to those of ecstasy. Nutmeg users can achieve highs lasting as long as seventy-two hours, but can also suffer mental breakdown. Some of the symptoms Malcolm described during his early months at Charlestown sound like the effects of nutmeg poisoning, especially the episodes of depression and paranoia. When Ella started sending small amounts of money, he used it to purchase drugs from corrupt guards who were happy to conduct business. Prisoners could obtain almost any drugs they wanted, from hash to heroin.

Malcolm had lived for years in a close web of family and stayed in relatively constant touch through mail and visits wherever he moved, but now, in his anger and shame about what had happened to him, he was reluctant to contact his siblings, especially Ella. During his first year in prison, he wrote only a few letters, including one or more to William Paul Lennon. The first one he received was from Philbert, to say that he had become a member of an evangelical church in Detroit. Philbert's a.s.surance that the entire congregation was praying for the soul of his younger brother enraged Malcolm. ”I scrawled him a reply I'm ashamed to think of today,” he later admitted. Things went no better when Ella visited. On one occasion, about fifty prisoners and visitors were crowded into the small visitation center, all of them surrounded by armed guards. Ella attempted to exchange pleasantries, but was so upset that it was almost impossible for her to talk. Malcolm became so defensive that he ”wished she hadn't come at all.”

His att.i.tude soon left him isolated, but he was not without visitors entirely. Malcolm's most regular, and perhaps most sympathetic, visitor was a teenager, Evelyn Lorene Williams. Evelyn's foster mother, Dorothy Young, was a close friend of Ella's. Indeed, the two women were such good friends that Ella's son, Rodnell, referred to Young as Aunt Dot. Malcolm had occasionally dated Evelyn during his years in Boston, and Ella had strongly encouraged the relations.h.i.+p. Malcolm had little s.e.xual interest in Evelyn-compared, say, with the chemistry he had with Bea. Evelyn, however, seems to have fallen deeply in love with Malcolm.

Another frequent visitor was Jackie Mason, a Boston woman who had been s.e.xually involved with Malcolm before his incarceration. Ella sharply disapproved of Mason, describing her as a ”common street woman” unfit for her brother. Her att.i.tude, according to Rodnell Collins, was that she ”was well aware of how much havoc [an] older, experienced predatory woman could wreak on a teenaged, adventurous, highly impressionable” boy.

When Ella did go to see him, she was not happy with what she found- that he was not reflecting in any serious way on why he had wound up in prison or what its consequences might be for him. She was upset about his continuing contact with Paul Lennon, and was scandalized by his resumption of drug use. After several disappointing visits, Ella decided not to see her brother again. When Malcolm learned about this, he appeared contrite. In a plaintive letter dated September 10, he thanked Ella for mailing photos of family members, and for small amounts of cash. But then he incensed her again by trying to get her to contact Paul Lennon on his behalf. ”The person that you said called me is a very good friend of mine,” Malcolm explained. ”He's only worth some fourteen million dollars. If you read the society pages you'd know who he is. He knows where I am now because I've written and told him, but I didn't say what for.” Without mentioning Lennon's name, he appealed to Ella to be cordial. ”He may call and ask you. Whatever answer you give him will have to do with my entire future but I still depend on you.” Apparently Malcolm was convinced that Lennon could use his wealth and political contacts to reduce his prison term. According to Collins, Lennon never contacted Ella. In her words, though, she was ”outraged” that her half brother had given her phone number to Lennon and that he had asked her to act as a go-between. Lennon, she thought, was obviously ”one of those decadent whites whom he had been hustling.”

In the end Malcolm was forced to confront the challenges of prison life by himself. And it didn't help matters that his att.i.tude toward prison work detail was noncooperative. During his first seven months at Charlestown, he was a.s.signed to the prison auto shop; then, that October, to work as a laborer in the yard. The month following, he was moved again, this time to sew in the underwear shop. Here he immediately ran into problems, being charged with s.h.i.+rking his duties; for this he was given three days' detention. His work performance improved somewhat when he was rea.s.signed to the foundry, where he was considered ”cooperative, poor in skill, and average to poor in effort.” It was also here that he met a tall, light-complexioned former burglar named John Elton Bembry: the man who would change his life.

Bembry, who was about twenty years older than Malcolm, dazzled the young man with his mind. He was the first black man Malcolm would meet in prison (and possibly outside of prison as well) who seemed knowledgeable about virtually every subject and had the verbal skills to command nearly every conversation. Intellectually, Bembry had an astonis.h.i.+ng range of interests, able to address the works of Th.o.r.eau at one moment, and then the inst.i.tutional history of Ma.s.sachusetts's Concord prison at another. Malcolm was especially attracted to Bembry's ability to ”put the atheist philosophy in a framework.”

Malcolm's brain came alive under Bembry's tutelage. Here, finally, was an older man with both intellectual curiosity and a sense of discipline to impart to his young follower. Both men were a.s.signed to the license plate shop, where after work inmates and even a few guards would cl.u.s.ter around to listen to Bembry's wide-ranging discourses on any number of topics. For weeks, Bembry carefully noted the wild behavior of his young workmate. Finally, taking Malcolm aside, he challenged him to employ his intellect to improve his situation. Bembry urged him to enroll in correspondence courses and to use the library, Malcolm recalled. Hilda had already offered similar advice, imploring her brother to ”study English and penmans.h.i.+p.” Malcolm consented: ”So, feeling I had time on my hands, I did.”

It is possible that the details Bembry (”Bimbi” in the Autobiography Autobiography) related to other convicts about his successful history of thefts found their way into Malcolm's tales about his own burglary exploits, but above all Malcolm envied Bembry's reputation as an intellectual. There was also a strong motive of self-interest: his own newfound enthusiasm for study and self-improvement might get him recommended for a transfer to the system's most lenient facility, Ma.s.sachusetts's Norfolk Prison Colony. The bait of increased freedom was enough to instill discipline within Malcolm, such that he finally chose to pursue a self-directed course of formal study. During 194647, he devoted himself to a rigorous program, fulfilling the requirements for university extension courses that included English and elementary Latin and German. He devoured books from Charlestown's small library, particularly those on linguistics and etymology. Following Bembry's advice, he began studying a dictionary, memorizing the definitions of both commonly used and obscure words. Education now had a clear, practical goal: it offered a way out, to a prison with better conditions, and maybe even a reduction in prison time. Ironically, it also had the side benefit of making him a more persuasive con man. Refining his oratorical skills, he found new success in hustles of various kinds, including betting on baseball.

Malcolm was duly transferred in January 1947-but to the Ma.s.sachusetts Reformatory at Concord, only a slight improvement over Charlestown. Concord maintained a so-called mark system of discipline, which set a confusing schedule of penalties and the loss of prisoners' freedoms for acts of misconduct. No inmate council existed to negotiate the conditions of work and supervision. The new regulations and the lack of prisoners' rights probably contributed to Malcolm's continued acts of noncompliance.

During his incarceration at Concord he received a total of thirty-four visits. Among them were five from Ella, three from Reginald, and nineteen from ”friends” (according to the redacted files)-undoubtedly Jackie Mason and Evelyn Williams, and possibly William Paul Lennon.

His hard work and professions about wanting to become a better man seem to have convinced Ella that he was finally committed to transforming his life, and she launched a letter-writing campaign to officials urging that he be relocated to the Norfolk Prison Colony. She encouraged Malcolm to write directly to the administrator in charge of transfers there. On July 28, in just such a letter, Malcolm employed his enhanced language skills to good effect: ”Since my confinement I've already received a diploma in Elementary English through the State Correspondence Courses. I'm very much dissatisfied, though. There are many things that I would like to learn that would be of use to me when I regain my freedom.” Still, he undermined his efforts by continuing to cause trouble. Throughout 1947, he was a.s.signed to the prison's furniture shop, where he was evaluated as a ”poor and uncooperative worker.” In April, he had been suspected of possessing ”contraband”-in this case, a knife. In September he would be charged with disruptive behavior, and on two more occasions penalized for poor work. But Malcolm was as adept as Ella in skirting penalties. After each infraction he improved his job performance sufficiently so as to avoid severe discipline.

In early 1948, a curious letter arrived from his brother Philbert, one that would have enormous consequences. Philbert explained that he and other family members had all converted to Islam. Malcolm was not surprised by the sudden enthusiasm, and did not take this particular turn very seriously. Philbert ”was forever joining something,” he recalled. Philbert now asked his brother to ”pray to Allah for deliverance.” Malcolm was not impressed. His reply, written in proper English, was completely dismissive.

Philbert's letter was in fact the opening salvo in a family campaign to convert Malcolm to a nascent movement called the Nation of Islam. As Wilfred later explained, ”It was a program designed to help black people. And they had the best program going.” They were determined to get Malcolm on board. After Philbert's letter had no effect, the family decided that an overture from Reginald might be more effective. Reginald wrote a ”newsy” missive that contained no overt references to the Nation of Islam, but concluded with a cryptic promise: ”Don't eat any more pork, and don't smoke any more cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison.” For days, Malcolm was puzzled. Was this some new way to hustle? He still had many doubts, but decided to follow the advice and stopped smoking. His new refusal to eat pork provoked surprise among inmates at the dining hall.